The recent rapid development of the Internet has opened many opportunities for new forms of commerce. This invention was initially conceived as a way to serve the part of the software development community that has been giving away software in the form of "shareware". Shareware is promoted by word-of-mouth on the basis of the impression of value to the users and is circulated free of initial charge with the expectation that prospective users who try the product will willingly pay for the right to continue to use the product. This invention uses the monetary incentive of multi-level marketing to augment "impression of value" to promote the word-of-mouth marketing, and this invention uses direct payment and individualized installation to augment "willingness" as a means for developers to receive payment. The individualized installation can prevent copying the product to other computers and can be built in such a way that prospective customers can have a trial period prior to making the payment and with a reinstallation upon payment. This provides all of the flexibility of shareware with significantly reduced risk to the product developer.
As a note: multi-level marketing is a method of sales promotion in which a commission is paid not only to the seller responsible for making the sale, but also to several levels of sellers that were responsible for distributing knowledge of the product to the seller making the current sale. For instance: a piece of software is sold for $25 and pays commissions of $5 to the person making the sale (the level 1 seller) , $3 to the person who informed him of the product (the level 2 seller), $1.50 to the person who informed him (level 3), and $0.50 to the person who informed him (level 4). If the purchaser encourages two sales to people who each encourage two sales to people who each encourage two sales, then the original purchaser receives more money back in commissions than he originally paid for the product, and the product developer gets paid every time.
The usefulness of this invention as a multi-level marketing server includes automatic shipping of hardcopy documentation and other types of products using an automatic shipping system for distribution.
Although many organizations have used computers to calculate commissions for multi-level marketing, none has set forth an invention that provides access directly to the customer to make purchases via a computer network from his own computer. All related prior art has required the involvement of a registered seller or operator with privileges to make sales entries to the computer.
Prior art has also included direct purchases via electronic computer network [1], both those delivered directly via the network and those delivered by automatic shipping systems. None of these direct sales via the network have a multi-level marketing commission capability.
These purchases via the network have involved the use of credit card accounts and/or electronic transfer of funds directly to and/or from bank accounts [2]. They have also used a form of currency that is considered cash on the network. Use of these various forms of cash and credit are simply identified as Method of Payment (from purchaser) and Method of Pay (to sellers and other payees).